The division of the Universe and the arrangement of the materials according to the three kingdoms of Hell, Purgatory and Paradise, independently of the peculiar meaning of these ideas in Christian theology, are also a general symbolic form, so that one does not see why under the same form every remarkable age should not have its own Divine Comedy. As in the Modern Drama the form of five acts is assumed as the usual one, because every event may be regarded in its Beginning, its Progress, its Culmination, its _Dénouement_, and its final Consummation, so this Trichotomy, or threefold division of Dante in the higher prophetic poetry, which is to be the expression of a whole age, is conceivable as a general form, which in its filling-up may be infinitely varied, as by the power of original invention it can always be quickened into new life. Not alone however as an external form, but as an emblematical expression of the internal type of all Science and Poetry is that form eternal and capable of embracing in itself the three great objects of Science and culture,—Nature, History and Art. Nature, as the birth of all things, is the eternal Night; and as that unity through which these are in themselves, it is the aphelion of the universe, the point of farthest removal from God, the true centre. Life and History, whose nature is gradual progress, are only a process of clarification, a transition to an absolute condition. This can nowhere be found save in Art, which anticipates eternity, is the Paradise of life, and is truly in the centre. Dante’s Poem, therefore, viewed from all sides, is not an isolated work of a particular age, a particular stage of culture; but it is archetypal, by the universal interest which it unites with the most absolute Individuality,—by its universality, in virtue of which it excludes no side of life and culture,—and finally by its form, which is not a peculiar type, but the type of the theory of the Universe, in general. The peculiar internal arrangement of the Poem certainly cannot possess this universal interest, since it is formed upon the ideas of the time, and the peculiar views of the poet. On the other hand, as is to be expected from a work so artistic and full of purpose, the general inner type is again externally imaged forth, through the form, color, sound of the three great Divisions of the Poem.